Genesis
by sisirongana
Summary: Everything's got to have a beginning, middle, and end. Miranda Lawson just wants to know what's what. FShep/Miranda. Oneshot.


_Note: Unbetaed (again. Maybe I should look into actually getting one?). Scribbled out instead of writing one of my final papers for a class. Lord help me. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think!_

_Disclaimer: Don't own anything. If I did, the characters would be doing naughty things all the time._

If she thinks about it, Miranda Lawson knows exactly where it begins.

It starts when Darby Shepard doesn't hesitate to say yes to rescuing Oriana, immediately setting the coordinates for Ilium to meet with Lanteia with hardly any question. When Miranda asks about this, Shepard simply shrugs with an easy smile. They've formed a strange, tenuous sort of friendship, but Miranda never expects Shepard to be so willing.

"You're part of my crew, Miranda. Anything to help," she says, like agreeing to put off saving the galaxy is not a big deal.

But Shepard means it, apparently, because she blasts her way through Ilium's cargo holds, stops Miranda from killing Niket and regretting it, and nudges Miranda towards Oriana, encouraging her to speak with the little sister she's always loved from afar.

"I couldn't have done it without you," Miranda admits later when they're alone in her office, and when she hears it out loud, she realizes how utterly true it is. And she recognizes what the strange feeling in the pit of her stomach for what it is, but shrugs it off in the face of Shepard's grin and her warm hand on her shoulder.

.

.

.

That's probably where it starts. Miranda's pretty sure of it.

From there, it only progresses, evolves past fluttering in her stomach into a strange pressure in her chest, especially when she notices Yeoman Chambers' little crush on the Commander and Darby doesn't.

"Fish?" asks Miranda dubiously, when they're at the Citadel and Shepard won't leave the shop without buying some. It's oddly charming, Shepard's childishness, so Miranda holds her hands up in compliance when Shepard glares.

"I like fish," she says defensively, picking out what Miranda has to admit are pretty little fish. What Miranda does not have to admit is how she immediately noticed how their deep blue hue matched the color of Shepard's eyes.

"And who is going to take care of them when we're on a mission?" Miranda questions reasonably as they leave the shop, heading back towards the Normandy.

Shepard holds the bag of fish up close to her face, peering at them and going cross-eyed in the process. "Oh, Kelly said she would feed them when I'm gone," she says absently.

"Yeoman Chambers," Miranda notes suspiciously to herself.

"Yeah," Shepard says, graciously letting Miranda enter the airlock chamber to the Normandy first. "Last night I mentioned how I wanted a pet. She said if I got the fish I wanted for my aquarium, she could take care of them."

"Last night?" Miranda hates how she sounds like an idiotic parrot, but she can't help herself.

Finally Shepard tears her attention away from her little pets to look at Miranda searchingly. "Over dinner. Are you all right, Miranda?"

"Something like that," she mutters, a strange amalgamation of feelings resting heavily in her chest.

.

.

.

It only gets worse, of course, as these things tend to do. It's grown from the pit of her stomach, into her chest, and then it leaps embarrassingly into her throat, this strange bunch of hormones and feelings.

A well-aimed missile from a heavy mech crashes through Shepard's shields, shattering them and knocking her several feet into the air. She lands flat on her back, and she's too far for Miranda to see. The Cerberus agent sends a blast of overload towards the mech and leaves Mordin to incinerate the bastard's armor and shoot him down.

"Shepard," she says, unaware of the trembling of her voice as she reaches the woman's prone body and gingerly turns her face towards hers.

Darby grunts, hazily regaining consciousness. Bleary blue eyes look up at Miranda, taking a second to focus. She reaches up towards her forehead, where a little blood flows from near her hairline. "Damn. Did you get the license plates of the truck that hit me?" She groans, sitting up.

Miranda laughs, looking away briefly to hide the look of fear and relief in her eyes. The lump of emotion in her throat doesn't go down easily, but she manages to swallow it. "Try a missile."

"Hopefully not anytime soon," Darby notes, and when she leans on Miranda for support as she carefully comes to her feet, the Cerberus agent knows she relishes the feel of the Commander's arm around her far too much.

.

.

.

It's a few days later when all of those feelings come to the forefront.

She's a little drunk, and so is Shepard, both of them having a little celebratory drink in Miranda's office after a hard day's work of capturing a Reaper IFF and fighting off hordes of husks and abominations.

Miranda's laughing for the first time in a while, harder than she ever has, because Shepard's drunkenly recounting the time she had unknowingly slept with a superior officer's daughter while she was in the Alliance academy. They both seem to sink into the couch they're resting on, and Miranda wants nothing more than to close the small gap between them and just settle onto Shepard's lap.

"Speaking of sordid past relationships…" Darby hedges, looking a little nervous despite her liquid courage, and it instantly piques Miranda's curiosity. The Commander hardly ever looks hesitant. "Did you and Jacob ever…?"

The interest Miranda has in this conversation instantly plummets. Miranda knows what Jacob looks like when he's interested, and the way he looks at Darby definitely is that. And while the Commander was known mostly for her short-lived relationship with Dr. T'Soni, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for the Commander to find Jacob attractive.

Darby must see the hardening of her eyes, how Miranda steels herself to answer the question, because she immediately backtracks, stumbling over her words. "I'm sorry if it's too personal, Miranda, I was just curious. He sort of hinted…well. Whatever, it's not important," she rambles.

Sighing, Miranda pours another glass of champagne for herself. "I guess what's fair is fair," she says, a wry smile on her face. "And the answer is no. We never...had anything like that. He wanted to, I think. But he just wasn't the one for me."

Shepard hums, looking contemplative. "I see," she says, swirling the glass of champagne in her hand.

Miranda takes a breath, knowing she'll hate the answer but having to ask anyway. "Why, are you interested in a certain Cerberus officer?" she says teasingly, her tone belying the dread she felt.

Darby's still a little red-faced from the alcohol, and her eyes are still a little blurred, but she looks solemnly, almost apologetically at Miranda. "Yes," she whispers, and Miranda tries desperately to keep her face expressionless, casting her eyes downward to stare at the floor.

There's a period of awkward silence that Shepard breaks with a shaky breath. "…But it's not Jacob," Darby admits, looking anywhere but at Miranda when the latter raises her head in surprise. "I'm sorry if this is awkward, I'm just a little drunk and I wanted you to know how I felt—"

Her nervous rambling is cut off, however, when Miranda surges towards her and presses her lips to the Commander's, burying her hands in her black hair, and all either of them can think is, _finally, finally._

When Miranda pulls away, Darby's eyes are glassy and her lips look a little bruised. "Oh," she says, resting her hands on Miranda's hips as they straddle her own.

"Yes," affirms Miranda, trailing soft fingertips down the Commander's jaw almost reverently.

"You…I…" Darby stutters. "_Oh."_

Laughingly, Miranda closes the gap between them and kisses Shepard again. "Mm-hmm," she hums against Darby's lips, planning to keep Shepard's mouth occupied in ways other than conversation for the next few hours or so.

Later, when Miranda thinks about it, blissfully watching Shepard sleep, she knows that it was that moment where it all ended, and where something else entirely began anew.


End file.
